CEI Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. CONGRESS
Business groups lobby for and against a proposed limit on greenhouse gas emissions.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on the economic threat from such regulation:
“If Congress and the Administration want to guarantee that the current economic downturn turns into an ongoing recession, they should enact a cap-and-trade bill as quickly as possible. Look at the European experience. European companies that supported the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme are now calling for an end to the resulting economic damage.”
2. INTERNATIONAL
The European Union refuses to follow a World Trade Organization ruling regarding the sale of biotech crops.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Food Safety Policy Gregory Conko on what the WTO ruling means for the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />U.S.:
“The most important victory for the United States and its partners was the WTO’s judgment that the European Commission failed to abide by its own regulations by ‘undue delaying’ of approvals for 25 gene-spliced food products. The culprit here was (and is) the European Commission’s highly politicized, sclerotic, two-stage approval process: Each application first must be cleared for marketing by various scientific panels, and then voted on by politicians, who routinely undo the scientific decisions.”
3. LEGAL
Congress considers a re-write and expansion of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the perverse effect the Act has had on employment of the disabled:
“Congress is currently in the process of rewriting the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to make it even more costly for employers to employ people with disabilities. The bill, ironically, is called the ADA Restoration Act of 2007. The existing ADA has done nothing to increase the number of disabled people in the workforce, because it punishes the very employers who follow its command to hire disabled people by subjecting them to costly lawsuits if they fail to make special ‘accommodations’ for their disabled employees. (The employer has to pay the disabled worker’s legal fees if the worker wins, but the employer is stuck paying its own legal fees even if the employer wins).”
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
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